Question 4 will ask voters in some districts if they want universal health care

Voters in Chicopee, a variety of towns in Berkshire and Franklin counties, as well as a number in eastern Massachusetts, will be asked if they want to change the health-care system in the state this November.

Those who live in the eighth Hampden, first Franklin, second Berkshire and fourth Berkshire districts are being asked a non-binding question that, if passed, would direct their state representatives to support creating a single-payer health insurance system.

Question 4 asks voters if they want a universal health care system that covers all residents at no cost and is paid for through payroll taxes. A yes vote will support a change in health care and a no vote would endorse the current system.

Supporters focused on districts where they had volunteers willing to collect enough signatures to place it on the ballot and have concentrated on areas where representatives have not sponsored a bill.

“There has been major health reform in Massachusetts and nationally. The main problem is the costs,” said Benjamin B. Day, executive director of Mass-Care, the non-profit grassroots agency responsible for the question.

His agency is hoping Massachusetts can begin a system that will spread country-wide, similar to what happened in Canada. There the province of Saskatchewan first passed a single-payer plan and that slowly expanded through the rest of the country, he said.

Already the California legislature has passed a single-payer insurance plan, and Vermont is considering it, Day said.

“A single-payer health care plan would cost about a half to a third as much as it does now,” he said. “It is a cost relief effort.”

But state Rep. Joseph F. Wagner, D-Chicopee, doubts a single-payer system would be less expensive than the current state system, adopted in 2007, that requires all residents to have insurance, and funds full or partial coverage for low-income families.

The system was also used as a model to reform national health insurance, he said.

But the state health-care system is costly, with an estimated 50 percent of the budget going toward funding it.

“There are some who feel it doesn’t go far enough in terms of universal health care,” he said. “To move forward with the plan would be unaffordable.”